coming out and saying sorry have become leitmotifs in my stranger-than-fiction life since sunday, and it seems to me there's some tinge of truth that what one does on the first day of the week is sustained throughout the rest of it.
on the way to manila, the search for tupig for gorgeous is no less than the quest for the proverbial holy grail. owing to the fact that i slept around 4 a.m. after a lively reunion with high school classmates, i woke up with the 9 a.m. sunlight brushing against my face and, in the process, missed purchasing the coconut strips-laced, banana leaf-wrapped native deli in the local market. i never got disheartened even when the warek-warek-selling mother of my classmate told me, "barok, never lose hope; there are lots of tupig...in carmen." i never mentioned to her that i was not on the way to baguio via that junction in rosales, pangasinan but in fact, traveling the opposite direction that’s the glittering metropolis. she propped up her consolation by offering me for free the mouth-watering ilocano counterpart of pampango sisig. from nueva ecija, i scoured nearby tarlac for that suman-like roasted delicacy. i heaved a sigh of relief when alas, at paniqui town, i found three tupig peddlers who have yet to sell half their items at already-late 11 a.m. hay, naku, mga manang, do you ever know how thankful i am to the heavens for your reliability just when the progress of my love life depends on this ambrosia? even at the hubbub and fishy smell of the public market, i ecstatically texted miss zenkit, complete with my baklese introductory reference to her as “bathaluman ng kagandahan,” about my laborious search for but eventual finding of tupig “for yulo my love.” in what is a terrible twist of freudian slip, i missent the message to the person i mentioned in the text intended for zenkit. ooops, houston, we have a problem—no amount of banging and shaking of the mobile phone would prevent the message from calling the attention of my unknowing beloved seated at his busy workstation at the shimmering international airport. i immediately transmitted gorgeous my apology, citing that it’s too late to cancel the missent text, and would he please ignore its content?
tuesday night when i got to see him, i braced for myself for whatever scene he would create: “you deserve this spanking, you shameless opportunist!” “how could you betray my friendliness to you?” “why didn’t you tell me soon so i could raise my ‘you’re busted’ placard for all the bar goers to see?” while madonna sang her fresh disco single “sorry” over the airwaves, he came up to me, scintillating eyes, welcoming arms and smile the sweetness of sugar apple, and remarked, “how’s your vacation? mukhang nangayayat ka sa kakabiyahe.” way past midnight, he thanked me for the delectable tupig he feasted on en route to his workplace, but i was more grateful that my accidental romantic confession is out in the open and the object of my affection isn’t the least bothered. then again, superstars like him are accustomed to being admired, so crazy fans like me are a part of his celebrity norm.
the following day, i met ma’am fely, a young professor of mine back in college, for two things: i’m lending her a critical reader that included michel foucault, and she was to make a comment on the poems i posted in my friendster blogspot. ooops, houston, we have another problem—is it the appropriate time to come out of my closet? for good measure, i have to reread my weblogs to check the substance more than the form, and the only controversial element in the poems seems the homoerotic overture. ma’am noted that, well, my poetry is worth being anthologized for its polished structure; for a literary coach with a midas’ touch to say so was sufficient to make me float, and i have to thank her a million times over as i did a few years before when she helped me win in an inter-university essay writing competition. and then, the bomb: why is the tone too dense, too un-little gapanese? I believe that ma’am was particularly alluding to the blasphemous poem “apocrypha,” so come out i did and defended that the gloomy atmosphere i painted in most poems represents the bleak, sad lives of gays at-large. in essence, i was speaking in behalf of the sisterhood which have yet to gain recognition and acceptance from the patriachal society. i said i was sorry if she felt she was had, and consequently unveiled the true identities of the two persons whom i called by the innocuous, genderless term palangga. Ma’am, meet my first palangga, preyoverknight; two years after him is my palangga of about a year, hansam. she asked if i was confused, to which i replied that i was confused only with my distressfully coexistent spirituality and homosexuality which seem to need to cancel out each other in my system. when the grilling was over and ma’am reassured me that it was the best decision to make, i thought of the very source of my literary inspiration, he who said i should not be apologetic about the things that i am, namely my poetry and homosexuality.
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